10/6 Back in Newburgh. Some notes about this trip.

We had an unusually long morning in Gothenburg, since our flight didn’t leave until 2pm. That made the cleaning of the house much less stressful; I even spent some time writing beforehand. The handling of J’s wheelchair was a mixed bag this time: truly exceptional in some places, cringey in others.

Even though this was Lufthansa, more than one ground staff member seemed irritated that we were using a personal wheelchair rather than the airport ones. (Reasons here.) The battery questions were a whole lot more painstaking this time, partly because it was Lufthansa and partly because apparently there had been a battery incident somewhere on the planet, with some airline, just recently. Even though I had been more thorough this time and registered the wheelchair with all the appropriate forms via telephone and email 48 hours before departure, we caused a delay in Frankfurt right at the gate because the words “Lithium-Ion” were not printed anywhere on the Chinese-made battery.

But then, on the transatlantic leg, we had a flight attendant like none we’d ever seen. He simply took charge of the wheelchair from beginning to end, informing J, as she took her seat, that her husband was just about done packing up the wheelchair, after which it would be transferred into the cargo hold and he would make sure to let us know once it was there. And when we arrived, he told us to stay seated until he had personally made sure that the wheelchair had arrived on the jet bridge right outside the aircraft door.

Driving on the conduits, the beltways, the parkways, and the freeways of the City felt, especially after Sweden, like Super Mario Kart. I wondered if I had a button somewhere to throw things around, and expected some blurpy game noises. We drove into Manhattan so J could pick up her Jeep, then to Newburgh quite worried about Link, because according to the feeder app he hadn’t eaten in three days. He was fine, though.

The morning in Gothenburg, the flights across Europe and across the ocean, the drive into the City – and then not just into the City, but further on to the countryside an hour up the Hudson Valley – had all seemed so alien to me not long ago, and now it seems even more alien to me that I’m getting used to it and consider it a normal thing to do.